The Glass Wall (20 page)

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Authors: Clare Curzon

BOOK: The Glass Wall
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‘Policemen can't be choosers.'
‘Ungrateful beggar. Everyone at home doing well?'
‘Flourishing, thanks. And your lot?'
‘Ginny's picked up a verruca at the leisure pool and for some reason thinks she should be immune. Seb's pockets must have even larger holes in them now he's up at Oxford. I guess that's par for the course.'
Yeadings laughed and rang off. The pathologist, tragically widowed eight months back, was immersing himself in the twins' activities as compensation, choosing to make a comic saga of their exaggerated misfortunes, and covering real grief with a carapace of determined cheerfulness. The daughter, kind child, had opted for a gap year before taking up her scholarship at UCL, and Yeadings guessed that there was a pact between her and Sebastian to keep their father bolstered with gossipy trivia.
Remind Nan to invite the Prof for dinner soon,
he wrote on his desk pad.
‘Did you get that?' he asked Beaumont. ‘Tomorrow, at 10.30. It could be a long session, in view of the state of the body.'
‘Disjointed data,' was the inescapable pun. ‘I guess it'll be me attending,' the DS complained.
‘Meanwhile, follow up this latest thing on Micky Kane. What do you suppose he'd done, to be chased by a woman?'
‘Could she have recognized the clothes he was wearing? Maybe family or a neighbour of the man he'd pinched them
from? But what was he doing down by the Odeon car park?'
‘Making for the vacant lot? Coming
from
the cinema? How much money had been left in the clothes he made off with? This sighting was roughly three hours after he got away from the hospital. Where better to spend the time anonymously on a bitterly cold night?'
‘I'd go for that, sir. There should have been three fivers and some loose change in the man's pockets. If Micky was desperate he wouldn't have hesitated to use the money. And in the Odeon he could get a snack to tide him over. Anything to put off contacting Allbright again.'
‘So perhaps he didn't. It could be someone else who raped and killed him, and we've been barking up the wrong tree. Get down there with a PC who's familiar with the beat. Find out who hangs around that waste ground; if any tramps doss down there. It's meant to be fenced off, but there could be ways of getting in. Since Micky left no fingerprints at Allbright's house, this is possibly where he spent the intervening time.'
‘And where he got the drugs?' Beaumont slid off the corner of his desk, patted his pockets and reached for his sheepskin. Sergeant Bird kept the beat records and would recommend a local man. It seemed a worthwhile angle to follow up.
 
DI Salmon thought he had a cold coming on. Sweating, he'd turned the heating down in his office, and now he couldn't stop shivering. Also his throat felt it had been scraped with sandpaper. With two ongoing major investigations begun, this was no time to feel under the weather.
This damned female suicide. At least they'd a suitable Misper to fit that. He had stayed on last night until the body was photographed and delivered to the morgue. There he'd watched her clothes bagged and had brought them away with him. Now he expected Beaumont to list and check them against what the Judd girl had last been wearing.
Snag One was that the mother hadn't seen her leave the house and had only the skimpiest idea of what hung in her daughter's wardrobe. Snag Two was that Beaumont had gone off on some errand for the superintendent and wasn't answering his mobile.
That meant using Zyczynski. Better she should burrow through the unpleasant garments than himself. Women's things, after all. Where was the wretched girl? Got in the way when there was work to be done, and now when she might have been of some use she'd gone missing.
He rang through to Yeadings' office. ‘Is Zyczynski by any chance up with you, sir?' he demanded.
‘Not at present, but I was thinking of sending for her. You sound as if you could do with a coffee, Walter. I'll start the machine up.'
Slightly mollified by the use of his forename, Salmon admitted that a large mug of Yeadings' special mocha wouldn't go amiss. By the time he was seated with this in his shivering hands he found his nose was irrevocably blocked.
The Boss noted his pallor and snorting speech. He reached into his lower drawer for the bottle of single malt, uncapped it and waved it at his DI. ‘It's a bit early, but it'll help you get through the rest of the morning.'
A light tap on the door announced DS Zyczynski. Salmon opened his mouth to despatch her to listing the clothes, but was overtaken by a fit of sneezing.
‘Have a seat, Rosemary,' Yeadings invited. ‘Your coffee's on the windowsill. I thought we should have a meeting.'
It wasn't time wasted. Salmon, listening intently, had to admit that the Boss had it all at his fingertips. He dealt the new death a dismissive ‘nothing we can do until we've an ID. Apart, of course, from a meticulous search of the college and questioning of all in the building from Sunday pm onwards. Someone there must have seen her at some point. It would help if we knew how long the body had lain there. Due to sub-zero night temperatures that won't be easy for the professor to determine.'
He then went on to summarize progress on the Micky Kane investigation. ‘We're badly in need of witnesses. There's little doubt that Allbright was the enticer codenamed “Hutch”, and it's vital that we find the computer he used to communicate with the boy. It's possible he has got rid of it or had the hard disk replaced. He's had time enough. And I agree with the assumption that he
met Micky on the same morning he skived off school and brought him back here either by car or on the bike. But not, apparently to the house. Wherever he took the boy, he appears to have relieved him of his schoolbag and the things in it. It's likely Micky had changed out of his uniform before they met up.
‘We have to find the alternative place Allbright took the lad, and it's there we just might find the computer, if it still exists. So has the man access to a country cottage, or a lock-up garage, an allotment shed, or workshop: somewhere that he's managed to keep in the dark? What were his hobbies outside the home? The search has to go on, spread wider.'
‘There's this gap,' Z said as Yeadings paused. ‘Four days between his leaving home and being picked up drugged and unconscious. His parents had tried to keep it low key, hoping he'd come back on his own. The Met police were informed, but it was kept out of the papers. A pity, or we'd have been on to him more quickly I've spoken again with the nurses who looked after him in ITU. They'd noticed no evidence of sexual assault. But then they hadn't specifically looked for it. They'd enough to do with detoxing him and keeping him going.'
‘So you're suggesting that up until then Allbright had been guilty of no more than abduction of a minor?' Salmon sounded to be choking equally with indignation and catarrh.
‘It's a possibility,' Yeadings gave as his opinion. ‘Professor Littlejohn stated that the abuse was recent. It could have happened after he escaped from the hospital, either before or after the woman was seen chasing him. Beaumont is checking on that area now. Until we know more we can't assume that Allbright ever caught up with him again.'
Salmon looked as if all the stuffing was knocked out of him.
Alyson slept late, having been restlessly awake for over an hour from some time after two, and then visited with disjointed, disturbing dreams. Waking, she had no precise memories of them, only a vague sense of unease. She supposed that Sheena's disappearance was connected with it.
Smelling coffee and warm yeast as she came out of the bathroom, her hair in a terry turban, she found Ramón had laid the table for breakfast and heated some flaky croissants.
‘This is pleasant,' she said, sitting down. ‘But you mustn't feel you need to work out of hours.'
‘I eat too,' he said simply and took the chair opposite.
They ate in silence until something came to mind that she had meant to ask him before. ‘Ramón, that first evening you stood in for me, Sunday. Was there anyone else here, besides Sheena, when you arrived?'
He seemed to consider this. Perhaps, she thought, ‘stood in for' was an idiom he had difficulty with, but no, he was nodding his understanding.
‘There was nobody,' he said.
‘I see. In that case he must have left already Or else he never came.' The only person to know would be Sheena. Except that, surely, the art valuation man would have been in touch with Fitt after his visit. She could ring his office later and set her mind at rest.
‘Emily is bright,' Ramón volunteered.
‘Brighter,
you say?' He had a way of rolling some of his ‘r's.
‘That's right. Bright, brighter, brightest.'
‘We dance,' he told her shyly. ‘Slow, with wheelchair. And she laugh.'
‘She has a great sense of fun. It's good for her to laugh.'
‘And sometimes cry.'
Did he mean that that too was good for her, or – ? ‘Emily cries?'
He nodded. ‘Sad life, she tell me.'
It startled her. In all the months she had been here Emily had
never confided that much. Or indeed spoken as much as she had done over these last few days. Ramón was bringing her out, rather as Keith had done. Perhaps it was men's company that stimulated Emily.
It should have occurred to her before, what was missing. Although Emily never married, there had certainly been men in her life. Fitt had implied as much. And there had been the illegitimate child born when she was seventeen, which made her run away from home. There must have been so much in her past that no one could guess at. If now she was remembering and speaking of it, did that mean she was regaining strength, or must it be seen as an intimation of the approaching end?
‘I wish I knew more about her,' Alyson confessed. ‘She's my great-aunt. That's my mother's mother's older sister, but none of us knew what had become of her until Mr Fitt tried to get in touch with me.'
‘Mr Fitt?'
So she explained. The solicitor had represented Emily for a very long time and knew all her family. There had been a daughter Eunice who lived in Edinburgh, had married and had the daughter Rachel, whom Ramón had met when she called. A distant cousin to herself, Rachel had mentioned an older half-brother and half-sister, Eunice being the second wife of their father.
‘I'm afraid that's rather complicated,' she apologized. ‘The trouble is I don't know any of them really; and little enough about them. But I gather Mr Fitt considers that Emily's better off at a distance from them.'
But that was only his opinion. She remembered now that Rachel had voiced criticism of the solicitor; some doubt about his management of Emily's affairs. It was a serious thing even to hint at a professional's dishonesty. Alyson quite liked the man; and why not, since he'd sought her out and set her up here? So did that mean she was partisan, being under an obligation to him?
And then, she hadn't cared for Rachel at all, on the brief occasion that they'd met. And afterwards Mr Fitt had opposed the family getting in touch again. Could he really do that? Had he
any right?
Certainly it was time he came out in the open with her. There was no reason why she shouldn't ask him to call, ostensibly to see Emily's progress and check on her employment of Ramón. An old-fashioned solicitor, he might even disapprove of Emily being intimately cared for by a male helper. Whatever the outcome, she would insist he took her into his confidence. There had been altogether too much taken on trust between them.
 
Beaumont had trouble catching up again with Mrs Durrant. He rang the hospital's maternity unit to hear that she had visited earlier that morning and left shortly after ten. No one answered when he rang the bell at her address. Then, advised by a neighbour, he ran her to earth at her daughter's house where there were two older children under school age whom she'd moved in to look after.
Yes, she assured him; it was certainly a woman she'd seen; not a priest in a cassock or one of those students who wore long arty-crafty coats. The street hadn't been well lit, but she'd known it was a woman by the way she ran.
And now that she'd thought about it, she was pretty sure the woman had shouted something at the boy's retreating back. She was breathless and the wind blew the words away. Maybe ‘Stop! Come back!' Something like that. And the boy hadn't taken a blind bit of notice. Just ran on.
Mrs Durrant would be a good witness in court, Beaumont considered. If it ever got that far. But still he had to meet up with off-duty Constable Jarvis and get the lowdown on the locality.
They met in the Odeon cafeteria which opened for lunches before the afternoon film show. Jarvis, large and ponderous, was halfway through a pineapple milkshake. Beaumont went across to join him with a cappuccino. ‘They expect you to eat,' he was warned, ‘but they know me here. You'll be all right.'
Bloody patronizing for a mere plod, Beaumont considered. ‘So what's the lowdown on the vacant plot past the car park?' he demanded.
‘There's a lotta local politics,' the PC warned him. ‘That's where the old council offices used to be before the clearance. A
developer made a bid for the site, only he had a brother was an alderman, so they musta bin afraid it could look dodgy. Anyway, they decided to hold it over for a bit. Only nobody else has been allowed to make a bid since. A bit of an embarrassment all round. So if there's any complaint put in about what goes on over there, they don't really want to know. A case of everyone lie low and say nuffink. Sort of Brer Rabbit, see?'
Beaumont saw. ‘So what does go on over there?'
Jarvis noisily sucked on his straw until the last of the milky sludge was drained off. ‘Not a lot. A bit of rough dossing down, but there's no harm in the old fellers. These cold nights they build themselves a fire. I don't enquire where they get the timber from. They've sense enough not to pull down the fence that hides them.'
‘Are they dealing?'
‘Drugs? Nah. Old winos, most of them. A bit of meths when the cash is low.'
‘Any kids there?'
‘Runaways, you mean? I never saw any. That's not to say they don't stick them under some tarpaulin when they see I'm on me way.'
It was clear that PC Jarvis took a relaxed view of policing. Beaumont guessed that for him his wage packet and a full belly were the mainstays of life. Beyond that, no hassle. And, a bluffer, maybe he had clout with others on the beat, which was why mention of this setup hadn't penetrated to the upper echelons. And had that silence even contributed to Micky's death?
Ironically he thanked Jarvis and rose to go.
‘I thought you wanted an escorted visit.' He sounded indignant.
‘That'll do for now. It all sounds harmless enough.' Beaumont was damned if he'd be trotted round there like an exhibit by this load of lard. Better to wait for dark and turn up in scruff order with a half of scotch to share. They might sniff out that he was Old Bill, but he guessed he'd get more from them than would a man in uniform.
 
‘When you're out shopping …' Alyson had said. And he'd felt
diminished in her eyes. But he saw she hadn't meant it that way.
Keith Stanford sat on in the car, debating with himself. After lunch he'd gone for the curtain cords and tassels Audrey had suddenly decided were vital. Whether sending him shopping was some whim of hers to humiliate him or an example of the mental aberration of a patient nearing the end he couldn't tell. Anyway he'd discussed colours and silk twists with an androgynous assistant in the furnishing store and was satisfied that what he'd chosen would match the rather shabby old curtains in the lounge. Now he was free.
Parked in one of the designated spaces for doctors at the hospital, he looked across to the stack of apartments above the car showrooms. There was a low light on in the penthouse as the afternoon darkened. Behind the wide window he made out the shape of a man standing, and the head and shoulders of someone a little lower: Emily, in her wheelchair, gazing out. He could go and see her.
Or he could drop in at the ITU.
He knew which he most needed, but he had no excuse. After a moment's uncertainty he leaned forward, switched on, put the car in gear and eased off the brake. Return dutifully to Audrey; try to shore up her whimsical interest in brightening up the lounge.
She heard the clang of the garage door closing, and still she stayed crouched on the bed, his suits scattered all round her. In her hands, torn and scrunched up, was the retrieved piece of precious evidence: the receipt from the restaurant
Da Roma –
two starters; two main courses; one dessert; two coffees; a single bottle of wine, but an expensive one – dated Sunday. Her last night imprisoned in the psychiatric unit. And his last night of freedom, as he'd have seen it.
His best jacket lay over her thighs. He'd worn it for his whore. He'd taken her where they'd once dined together: the pink place with low lights and discreet service. She guessed there would be bedrooms upstairs, but she'd never ventured that far. Every detail rewound like a loop of film in her mind, and at each showing she held fast to it with searing relish.
She heard the front door open and he called out, ‘I'm home!' She crouched lower, stuffing the treacherous, shredded paper in her mouth and gagging as it soaked up all the saliva, making it impossible to swallow.
‘Audrey! Where are you, love?'
That
love
again! She clamped her jaws together, gulped once more and the wad passed over her tongue, lodged in her dry throat. She was choking. His infidelity would kill her! But not here, like this. There was a better way.
Footfalls on the stairs. He was almost upon her. She tried to scream, sobbed, and part of the wad moved farther down.
‘Audrey, what on earth?' He took in her distraught state, the jumble of his own clothes strewn about the bed and on the floor. She was crouching, with fear and open venom in her eyes. He couldn't deny the vindictive intention. She'd meant to destroy his things, but hadn't managed to find the scissors.
‘Don't touch me!' she screamed. As he went forward she stumbled from the far side of the bed and made for the open bathroom door. He followed and held her as her body was racked with convulsions. She vomited in the handbasin, and seemed to be bringing up confetti.
Eating paper. She was demented. He should never have brought her home. She would need sedation, and then he must get Dr Ashton across to assess her.
 
DC Silver unwrapped another mint humbug and popped it into his mouth. ‘They'll think you've been drinking,' his partner warned, leaning forward to clear the misted window. ‘How the hell long do we have to keep this up? He's having a long lie in. We're on to a dead end here.'
‘Thank the Lord for small mercies,' Silver mouthed around his champing jaws. ‘We're out of the Salmon's reach here and a negative report's less bother.'
‘Uh-uh!' They both tensed. Although the bedroom window remained curtained, a burly figure in leathers had materialized from the side passage to the house and was at one of the double garage doors, removing the padlock.
‘Dressed for the bike,' Silver whispered.
Allbright went inside, to reappear wheeling the Harley-Davidson. Silver reached for the ignition and gave one or two encouraging but subdued bursts of acceleration. If the man went burning rubber up the motorway they'd be in for a hair-raising chase with little chance of keeping up. As the bike turned into the road their unmarked car slid out of the shadows and fell in some distance behind. Allbright was making for the town centre, circled the central island and turned right for open country. ‘Good,' Silver decided as they climbed among trailing traffic uphill.
About eight minutes of steady driving brought them to winter-bare fields and sparse farm buildings. Three vehicles ahead the Harley signalled left and turned into a narrow track. The Ford continued past, and fifty yards farther on pulled up by the gate to a ploughed field. From there they'd need to walk back. Silver hadn't missed the
No Through Road
sign at the track's opening.

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